Lay My Hat

Just double-checking my calendar and tweaking my Air Bnb listing this morning, and came across this:

Si votre évaluation tombe en dessous de 4.0, vos annonces peuvent être suspendues. Cette note prend en compte les commentaires des 365 derniers jours.

So, if an awkward guest decides to leave a review of less than 4.0 they can suspend your listing.

OK, my French is not ideal, but I'm sure they refer to your AVERAGE rating over the past year. One 4 star rating will not do that - unless its the only one

e-richard wrote:OK, my French is not ideal, but I'm sure they refer to your AVERAGE rating over the past year. One 4 star rating will not do that - unless its the only one

Granted, but if you list on several other sites, plus take bookings from your own website, as I do, then I might only get a couple of Airbnb reservations in a year, as I expect other owners might do as well. In that case, you could have one 4.5 evaluation for example, then a disgruntled guest could leave a 3.0, which could result in a suspension, unless I am reading it wrongly.

Agree with this. It should be at least the rolling average of the last two years. If you only have a handful of ABB bookings then a longer time frame should be used.

Similarly, to become a super host you need at least (if I recall correctly) 10 well reviewed rentals in a year. We can never be a super host under this scheme even if (as we have) a 100% 5 star rating.....

This is one of our major worries. We are currently on an average 4.3 through no fault of our own.
The problem we are facing is that Dutch guests hardly ever leave a 5-star review. From 6 reviews left, 4 of these are 4 out of 5 star (3 reviews from the NL and 1 from Israel). The two 5 star reviews we have are from German and Canadian guests. There is nothing in the 4-star reviews to show that anyone was in anyway unhappy with anything.

4 groups of guests that booked our farmhouse via ABB did not leave a review, and 2 of these were Dutch. If those Dutch guests had left a review, we believe that our listing would have already been removed, solely because ABB believes that if you don't get 5-stars then something needs addressing. What they don't understand is that other nationalities sometimes don't act like Americans do. Actually, a 4-star review from Dutch guests is very good. It means 'everything was in order', yet ABB believes too many 4-star reviews is not good?!

Anyhow, with a majority of Dutch guests booking our property via ABB and leaving the most reviews (always 4 star), one thing is certain: it's a ticking clock before our listing gets removed because of this lunacy. I suppose the only way to prevent the inevitable from happening is to cancel the instant book facility and just reply to all enquiries from the NL that we are full, ignoring the fact that they make up the majority of our ABB bookings!

OD is currently the only site that still works for us (better than ever before - with an almost 400% increase in bookings for the 2017 calendar compared with the average what we were getting between 2006 and 2016). But once the guest email addresses become hidden on our account (maybe when our current paid subscription ends in January 2019), then we expect that to drop off a cliff, as the majority of our guests do not have credit cards or are unwilling to use credit cards online, and therefore will not be able to pay OD's service fee to make a booking.

The problem us owners face is that we are being undermined by these sites at every possible opportunity. When you think that it can't get any worse, it does.

I can see the reason for concern over these ratings Limousin-cottage and Anglo Dutch

It seems far harder to get a good rating on Air Bnb than on other sites..

I have 17 or so 5 star reviews on Trip Advisor
A similar number on Owners Direct: All 5 star apart from one!!

However on Air BnB my cottage has 5 reviews over 4 years: Average only 4.4!

I have a low score on price .. annoyingly particularly for 2 last minute bookings when I had reduced the price substantially...

Having changed my photos and amended my rates on Air B'nB recently I have just had 3 bookings through them (after none for 10 months)!

My prices are still a bit higher than other local properties so waiting to see what the guests response is..

More and more local properties appear to be getting bookings through AirBnB so I would like a share of this market!